Notes: I started Making the Grades on a dare, so I really wasn't very clear about where I was going. There were no plans, or thought through characters or relationships ... I just started drawing. After the first two strips it seemed like I was going to write a strip about a pair of female students ... but to say that implies too much forethought. Of course, this run of the comic only lasted 3 strips, so there's no telling where I might have gone if I'd continued.

The asian character was physically based on my girlfriend at the time, but I made no attempt to instill the cartoon with her personality. The other character was just someone who had shown up on my doodle pads for a while. To this day I still have no idea exactly what inspired her, or what she represented to my subconscious. But after this strip she pretty much went away.